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Bonus has been increased to 35,000 Starpoints after $7,000 spend in 3 months. This is about as good as this bonus ever gets. I’ve provided a referral link above (you get the same bonus for a referral link vs. a direct link). Offer ends March 28, 2018.

Last month, City National Bank updated the benefits of their Crystal Visa card to include a $30 credit to GroundLink. I decided to figure out how this all worked, and in doing so, I stumbled across these links:

Once you enter your Visa Signature/Infinite card details into the corresponding link above, you then log into your GroundLink account, and the respective credit ($20 or $30 depending on card type) will be added to your balance. What I figured out but did not expect is that you can do this for every Visa Signature/Infinite card you have and load them all into the same account. I was able to do this 25 times before I ran out of credit cards and now have over $500 of GroundLink credit. All of my personal Visa Signature and Infinite cards worked (i.e. not business). All authorized user cards worked as long as they had unique card numbers. It did not matter that their cardholder names did not match the name on my GroundLink account.

GroundLink does have a referral program by which both the referrer and referee receive a $25 credit, so you will want to do this too.

You can of course choose to use someone else’s referral if you don’t want to use mine.

The terms for these credits seem to indicate various restrictions such as not being to combine credits, having to use the specific credit card that the credit came from, etc., but as far as I can tell, none of this is actually enforced, and I have a single combined GroundLink credit in my account. I tried a test booking of over $100 on the website, and it allowed me to pay for my entire reservation with my credit balance.

For completeness’ sake, here is the full list of credit cards that I was able to confirm do work, but I’d be fairly surprised if anyone finds a personal Visa Signature/Infinite card that doesn’t:

Alliant Cashback

Bank of America Premium Rewards

Bank of America Travel Rewards

CapitalOne VentureOne Rewards

Chase Freedom

Chase Freedom Unlimited

Chase Hyatt

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Chase Sapphire Reserve

Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier

Chase United MileagePlus Explorer

Citi Costco Anywhere

City National Crystal

Club Carlson Premier Rewards

Fidelity Rewards

Merrill+

Priceline.com Rewards

U.S. Bank Cash+

I tried three business cards that did not work: Chase Ink Cash, Chase Ink Plus, and Club Carlson Business Rewards.

Quick Summary

Points can be redeemed for cash back. Other redemption options are not worth considering.

The signup bonus is $100 after spending $500 in 90 days.

4% cash back on dining

3% cash back on airfare, hotels, travel agencies, and vacation home rentals including AirBnB

2% cash back on online shopping

Among this card’s other benefits, two main highlights are a $600 cell phone insurance benefit ($25 deductible) and a $50 subscription credit (i.e. Netflix), but the latter requires spending $5,000 in a year to activate. Also, there are no annual or foreign transaction fees.

Should You Get This Card?

It is fairly easy to find a credit card with a $400+ signup bonus either with no annual fee or the first year’s annual fee waived. Keeping that in mind, this card’s bonus is a mere $100, so I would rather apply for another card unless I felt that the benefits of this card were worth $300+. Also note that credit cards giving 2% cash back on all purchases with no annual fee are pretty easy to find too. I’ll spare a lengthier analysis and say the following:

If you travel and dine a lot, especially internationally, consider the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.

If you dine a lot (>$400/month) but don’t travel, and the $100,000 requirement in #2 is an issue, consider the Uber card… Unless you already have the Citi Costco Visa card (3% cash back on travel & dining, also 4% cash back on gas), in which case the incremental upgrade on dining purchases probably isn’t worth it.

If you dine out a bit but less than $400/month and don’t travel much, or if you already have the Citi Costco Visa card, consider any number of other cards that just have a large signup bonus ($400+) and cancel those cards later if they have annual fees you don’t want to pay.

If #4 sounds like too much work, or if you break your phone a lot, then fine, get this card.

What the title says. This promotion applies to all three Southwest cards but is for residents of California only. If you take part in this offer, you are still eligible for the current signup bonuses for all three cards, which are as follows:

The Companion Pass earned from this promotion will be valid through 12/31/18, regardless of when the first purchase is made. This is in contrast to earning a Companion Pass the “normal” way (see here), which, if timed properly, can get you a Companion Pass valid for nearly two years.

The signup bonus on the personal cards has been as high as 60,000 points in the past, so even though you get a Companion Pass, you do give up a potential 20,000 points if you are signing up for one of the personal cards.

You are not eligible for this offer if you currently hold any Southwest Rapid Rewards card or if you’ve earned a signup bonus from any one of them within the past 24 months.

All of these cards are subject to the Chase 5/24 rule, so if you’ve opened 5 or more personal credit cards in the past 24 months, you will not be approved for any of them.

Overall though, this is still a pretty good offer and potentially worth doing if you live in California. Note the promotion ends 11/30/17, so sign up before then if you are interested.

Interestingly, I did make a PayPal Digital Gifts purchase on 10/17/17 directly through their website, not Ebay, and it did earn 5x points. With that said, my guess is that this might have more to do with the timing of the purchase and is probably not an exception. Even it if it were an exception, I doubt it would last long, and there usually aren’t that many deals that involve buying directly from PayPal Digital Gifts.

There are a few other 5x methods that previously worked with Ink that will be worth testing again. In any case, it’s the end of an era, as they say…

The number of miles and points offered by these cards are relatively good, but personally I’ve been finding AAdvantage miles more difficult to use lately and have thus amassed a pretty large stockpile of them. As for the SPG offer, their points are great, but $10,000 spend is a bit much, especially now that American Express is looking out for manufactured spending techniques and may potentially deny the bonus if you use MS to meet the spend requirement.

Anyway, these offers are still worth doing if you’re looking for more AAdvantage miles or if you can meet the SPG card’s $10,000 spending requirement easily.

The signup bonus is good, clearly, but subtracting the annual fee leaves you with a net $405. On the other hand, depending on how easy the $100 airline incidental credit is to redeem, this might bump the card back up to near $505 in value.

2% back on travel and 1.5% back everywhere is only interesting if you have $50,000+ on deposit with Bank of America or Merrill Edge. I’ve covered this on this blog before, but with that much in assets, you can qualify for Bank of America’s Preferred Rewards Tiers (link), boosting your credit card rewards by 50% (for $50,000 to $99,999) or 75% (for $100,000+). This would bring your total cash back to:

Platinum ($50,000 to $99,999 in assets): 3% cash back on travel and 2.25% cash back everywhere else

Platinum Honors ($100,000+ in assets): 3.5% cash back on travel and 2.625% cash back everywhere else

There is a no annual fee version of this card (link). The main differences are:

Smaller ($200) signup bonus

No $100 airline incidental credit

No bonus earnings on travel purchases (1.5% cash back everywhere, boosted to 2.25% or 2.625% with Platinum or Platinum Honors)

Points redeemed only as statement credit against travel expenses (not that difficult, but still an extra step)

Lots of cards have Global Entry credits and no foreign transaction fees nowadays, so I don’t care about those.

Overall, this card is worth getting for the bonus. It’s worth keeping if you have $50,000+ on deposit with Merrill Edge or Bank of America and the $100 airline incidental credit is easy for you to redeem. If you have $50,000+ on deposit but have trouble redeeming the airline incidental credit, you can consider downgrading to the no annual fee version of this card when your annual fee comes due. Anyone else should cancel.

Via Doctor of Credit, Chase has added a pair of new restrictions to the Sapphire card lineup, which includes the Sapphire, the Sapphire Preferred, and the Sapphire Reserve credit cards.

You will no longer be approved for any Sapphire product if you currently hold another Sapphire product of any type.

You will no longer be eligible for the signup bonus on any Sapphire product if you have received a signup bonus on any Sapphire product within the past 24 months.

The 24-month rule is similar to their current rule, except it normally only applies for cards of the exact same type, i.e. if you received a signup bonus on the Sapphire Preferred, you were only prevented from getting the signup bonus on another Sapphire Preferred within 24 months of the date you received the bonus. Now with this updated rule, all Sapphire cards are being lumped together, such that receiving a signup bonus on one type of Sapphire card makes you ineligible for a bonus on any of the other Sapphire products as well, for a period of 24 months.

In short, if you are looking for a Sapphire card signup bonus, make sure you a) cancel or convert any existing cards you have and b) haven’t received a Sapphire card signup bonus in the past 24 months. If you satisfy both of those, you’re good to go. Obviously, the 5/24 rule still applies as well.

Via Doctor of Credit and The Points Guy, the signup bonus on the Citi Prestige Card has increased to 75,000 ThankYou points after $7,500 spend in 3 months.

Quick Summary

Annual fee of $450 is not waived

Points are worth 1.25 cents each toward airfare or can be transferred to travel partners

$250 annual air travel credit

4th night free hotel benefit (based on average cost per night over four nights and does not include taxes or fees)

$100 fee credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre✓

Priority Pass select membership

No foreign transaction fees

While the annual fee is not waived, it is effectively $200 after the air travel credit, and you can technically get two credits your first year (the credit goes by calendar year, sort of — it resets after your December statement) for a net profit of $50. $100 fee credits for Global Entry or TSA Pre✓, Priority Pass memberships, and no foreign transaction fees are dime-a-dozen these days, so I don’t value those benefits very much at all.

This card is certainly worthwhile for the signup bonus, but it is only worth keeping long-term if you can get a lot of use from the 4th night free hotel benefit.

While this card does earn 3x points on Air Travel & Hotel and 2x points on Dining & Entertainment, the Chase Sapphire Reserve is better. So, meh, as far as earning more points is concerned.